My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict in
another part of the café. I saw above the heads of the seated patrons
E. Rushmore Coglan and a stranger to me engaged in terrific battle.
They fought between the tables like Titans, and glasses crashed, and
men caught their hats up and were knocked down, and a brunette
screamed, and a blonde began to sing “Teasing.”
My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth
when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying
wedge formation and bore them outside, still resisting.
I called McCarthy, one of the French _garçons_, and asked him the cause
of the conflict.
“The man with the red tie” (that was my cosmopolite), said he, “got hot
on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of
the place he come from by the other guy.”
“Why,” said I, bewildered, “that man is a citizen of the world—a
cosmopolite. He—”
“Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said,” continued McCarthy,
“and he wouldn’t stand for no knockin’ the place.”